Afghanistan women leaders – business own…

While Afghans wait to hear whether President Obama will indeed decide to send more troops to their soil, one group is watching especially closely: the nation’s women leaders, who worry about what comes next—and whether they will be able to hold on to the gains they have made since the international community flooded Afghanistan with dollars and development programs seven years ago. While they are not certain that additional boots on the ground are the answer to the grave problems facing their nation, these women say they are eager to see the Americans renew – rather than retreat from – their commitment to Afghanistan.
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Even while some political activists and pundits in Washington and London sound the call for a full troop withdrawal, women here argue that a complete pullback would only exacerbate the battery of formidable problems plaguing their struggling nation. Though nearly all say the international community could have done a far better job in securing a teetering Afghanistan, where practically every citizen can now rattle off a personal tale of corruption, few women say they believe foreign forces should go.

In a series of conversations with a dozen women leaders spanning a range of sectors, from health care to business to politics, some of whom rarely speak to journalists, the consensus was that existing troops must stay for now—if only because things would be far worse were they to leave. Insecurity would rise, the Taliban would gain power, and women and girls would immediately lose ground.

One of the original justifications for the war in 2001 that seemed to resonate most with liberal Americans was the liberation of Afghan women from a misogynist regime. This is now being resurrected as the following: If the U.S. forces withdraw, any gains made by Afghan women will be reversed and they’ll be at the mercy of fundamentalist forces. In fact, the fear of abandoning Afghan women seems to have caused the greatest confusion and paralysis in the antiwar movement.

What this logic misses is that the United States chose right from the start to sell out Afghan women to its misogynist fundamentalist allies on the ground. The U.S. armed the Mujahadeen leaders in the 1980s against the Soviet occupation, opening the door to successive fundamentalist governments including the Taliban. In 2001, the United States then armed the same men, now called the Northern Alliance, to fight the Taliban and then welcomed them into the newly formed government as a reward. The American puppet president Hamid Karzai, in concert with a cabinet and parliament of thugs and criminals, passed one misogynist law after another, appointed one fundamentalist zealot after another to the judiciary, and literally enabled the downfall of Afghan women’s rights over eight long years.

Any token gains have been countered by setbacks. For example, while women are considered equal to men in Afghanistan’s constitution, there have been vicious and deadly attacks against women’s rights activists, the legalization of rape within marriage in the Shia community, and a shockingly high rate of women’s imprisonment for so-called honor crimes — all under the watch of the U.S. occupation and the government we are protecting against the Taliban. Add to this the unacceptably high number of innocent women and children killed in U.S. bombing raids, which has also increased the Taliban’s numbers and clout, and it makes the case that for eight years the United States has enabled the oppression of Afghan women and only added to their miseries.

This is why grassroots political and feminist activists have called for an immediate U.S. withdrawal from their country. After eight years of American-enabled oppression, they would rather fight for their liberation without our help. The anti-fundamentalist progressive organization, Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), has called for an immediate end to the war. Echoing their call is independent dissident member of Parliament Malalai Joya, who tells her story in her new political memoir, A Woman Among Warlords.

I think Joya’s position is an outcome of the way she was (shabbily) treated in the Loya Jirga assembly and her marginalisation by the power brokers there. That was clearly wrong, on the other hand, it was sort of naive of her, to think that any settlement in after the 2001 invasion wouldn’t include figures that were not serious about womens’ rights.

This isn’t true, Aziz, RAWA’s origins lie in the refugee camps that sprung up in northern Pakistan during the Soviet invasion; where they developed a reasonable grassroots programme. They are also very active within Afghanistan today at a number of different levels. It is a great disservice to label them as an ‘expat group’ though they have been appropriated by feminist groups based abroad (whether this is a good or bad thing we can debate). They are quite radical in some aspects, have elements of Marxism and Liberal thought as well as other religious currents in their ideology. The bulk of their membership is based within the womens’ groups within Afghanistan and the Pakistani border regions.

They have taken a strong line against certain things and tend to have poor relations with the state and foreign NGOs and aid agencies; which accounts for why there is hostility to them from these sectors and why they don’t always get the support they deserve.

The U.S. armed the Mujahadeen leaders in the 1980s against the Soviet occupation, opening the door to successive fundamentalist governments including the Taliban. In 2001, the United States then armed the same men, now called the Northern Alliance, to fight the Taliban and then welcomed them into the newly formed government as a reward. The American puppet president Hamid Karzai, in concert with a cabinet and parliament of thugs and criminals, passed one misogynist law after another, appointed one fundamentalist zealot after another to the judiciary, and literally enabled the downfall of Afghan women’s rights over eight long years.

implies that womens rights were bad during the 1980s and were better during the Taliban era, and then got bad again during the US invasion era?

Theres no question that womenns rights remain bad right now. But they are better than the Taliban era by a simple metric – girls are going to school. Those schools are being attacked – by the Taliiban – but they still go to school in amazing bravery. Weve discussed cases of girls facing down Taliban, even ones whove been attacked with acid, refusing to give up. Why is that possible? Because we are there, and no other reason.

frankly the 1980s business is just irrelevant to this debate. The reality is today: Taliban are the threat to schools. Karzai si a complex figure, not our finest scion of liberalism no, but certainly not the guy whos going to trow acid on girls faces and shut down their schools. Not as long as he is sucking at our, um, breast.

In a lot of ways, our presence creates teh bretahing space for the afghan women to finally “fight for their liberation” – but if they think they can do it without our help, with the Taliban in control, then one might reasonably ask how well that was going for them from 1999 – 2001. Because THATS the baseline of comparison now.

Weve discussed cases of girls facing down Taliban, even ones whove been attacked with acid, refusing to give up. Why is that possible? Because we are there, and no other reason.

I’m sorry, but that’s an incredibly paternalistic statement. It’s possible because *the girls themselves* get up and go back to school after being attacked by acid and threatened and bombed. If “we” were doing “our job” those attacks and bombings would never have happened in the first place.

Let’s not fall into the trap of believing Afghani women are helpless puppets just waiting to be rescued by heroic foreign invaders.

well, i dashed that off in a hurry so it probably came out more condescending than i meant. but lets rewind to the Taliban era – there were no girls schools. None. But on November 20, 2002, the girls returned to school. by the thousands. Why? what changed in November 2002?

Yes the girls are incredibly heroic to return to school despite being attacked with acid and worse. But for us to “do our job” as you argue, to stop all Taliban from attacking all the hundreds of schools that have opened since we arrived in Afghanistan, would require a lot more troops than we are currently telling Obama not to send.

This is the wierd paradox of the conventional wisdom about Afghanistan I perceive in the islamsphere and progressive blogsphere. On one hand we hear how we must leave Afghanistan, and on te other we rail against drone attacks on civilians and attacks by Taliban on school girls and the opum trade and Karzai’s corruption. None of that is goood. But with withdrawal, it gets a lot worse.

the only cogent argument about leaving is the “fie on them” one. Its a rational one that asks the reasoable question about what our strategic interests actually are there. thats open to debate. But if we leave, then we leave those girls to their fate. Every school *will* close. How that represents a better state of affairs than now is frankly beyond my understanding.

its possible we are talking at cross purposes. maybe we need to rewind the debate to some agreed upon point and work from there. I dont know. I certainly havent been very persuasive.

well, I agree that stability is a general desired end goal. But we have to be equally frank in admitting that no amount of US troops will ever “make” Afghanistan stable. Ever. stability is only achieved after civil society and internal rule of law has had sufficient breathing sopace to develop, mature, and gain strength enough that it can exist without outside assistance.

I see our troops as helping keep that breathing space open.

The ability to found a school is an amazing thing and I am in awe of yoru grandmother’s willpower. That was a different time, of course, as you pointed out. During teh Taliban era, things were more stable too – but there were no schools for girls. And if we leave, Afghanistan will be stable again, and there will be no more schools for girls.

Aziz. I’m going to cite a tradition against you. I hope you don’t take it the wrong way. Delete this comment if you are uncomfortable with that.

The following is from al-Ghazali’s Ihya:

…Tradition tells how a certain man praised another in the presence of God’s Messenger (God bless him and give him Peace!) then blamed him the very next day. So he (Peace upon him!) said:

You praise him one day and blame him the next!

[The man replied:]

Yesterday I told the truth about him, and today I did not lie about him. He pleased me yesterday so I told the best I knew of him. He angered me today so I spoke the worst I knew of him.

To this he (God bless him and give him Peace!) said:

Reasoned argument can be sorcery.

He evidently disapproved of it, since he likened it to sorcery. Thus he said, in another traditional report:

Abuse and argumentation are twin branches of hypocrisy. …

Okay, I’m not calling you a hypocrite or anything bad like that. Ignore that. The reason I’m citing this tradition is because it shows how Reason and Truth can be used and abused for the wrong reasons. And, to me, it seems that you are using Reason to justify military occupation. This seems very unethical. Especially after that resignation letter published recently by Matthew P. Hoh.

Omar, i guess it boils down to whether you ever think a military occupation can be anything other than an evil immoral thing. Postwar Germany and Japan come to mind.

And calling our presencean occupation itself is a kind of pedantry – yes we have troops there, but are we actually occupying? With all that implies? I wont go into this further but will just ask you to honestly reflect upon that.

Lets remember one thing though, the US and NATO are not in Afghanistan to protect womens’ rights; that might be a desirable by-product of the occupation but it is not a prime objective.

Secondly, lets look at this in the long-term; at some point NATO and US forces will leave; given all the propaganda that has associated, rather opportunistically imo, gender freedom with the imposed Karzai regime; it has served to reinforce the negative association between this and an un unwelcome, imposed foreign backed regime that has increased insecurity and violence in many parts of the country.

Remember that things are relative, the vast majority of Afghan society and Afghan men who dominate society are very conservative in their attitude towards gender roles in society and the place of women – how can it be otherwise in a primarily rural society. This can only change slowly through a process of social change at the grassroots level, it can’t be be imposed from above.

i think i disagreee. womens rights may not be the main objective but they are a “metric” for he mission’s success, which is to create breathing room for the weak civil socity that we have impanted in Kabul to take root, grow, and strengthen.

contrary to persistent assertions, we arent “imposing democracy/women’s rights from above”. We are creating space for it to grow in the grassroots manner as you rightly state it must, for long-term viability.

If these freedoms are tender shoots of grass growing in native soil, then we are the simply the fence around it. There are cows – and bulldozers – beyond that fence. We arent providing much of the water and probably none of teh sunlight to make the grass grow. All we are is a fence. Someday that patch wil be a lawn, and we can enlarge the fence, and maybe someday this place will be a field.

well……what the talis say is that girls can go to school as long as they are accompanied by a male relative…..i say….take them up on that.
Pay male relatives to got to school with the girls.
Why not?
They can go to school too.
It seems like that would be a better way to spend money…..instead of killing people, pay for chaperones.

May I remind you all that south Carolina didnt validate women’s sufferage until freakin’ 1970?
I think the best thing is gtfo and let Afghani society equilibriate.
Aziz, your reccomendation stinks of democracy promotion.
No.

Remember that things are relative, the vast majority of Afghan society and Afghan men who dominate society are very conservative in their attitude towards gender roles in society and the place of women – how can it be otherwise in a primarily rural society.

I just want to point out that though what you say may be true, it is a misrepresentation to apply it to what the Taliban tried to impose on Afghanistan, which was absolutely radical and unprecedented.

You have to remember, the Taliban didn’t even grow up in Afghanistan, they were nearly completely divorced from what might more accurately be called ‘traditional’ or ‘conservative’ Afghan culture. Theirs was the society of the rural Pakistani madrassas and/or the refugee camps.

I know I’ve over-referenced Ahmed Rashid’s book on the Taliban lately, but the information is too apropos not to. Rashid writes about some of the NGOs in Kabul in the mid-1990s referring to Taliban policies toward women as ‘traditional’ and ‘conservative,’ and thereby helping create a lie about Afghan culture and legitimizing policies and actions that had no basis in Afghan history.

I suppose I’ll get ragged on for being a cognitive anthropology fan again, but Aziz….you know better.
Evolutionary theory of culture dictates that cultures evolve in order fill the needs of the population. The Taliban were welcomed with flowers after the Russian occupation.
Big White Christian Bwana was just fighting a proxy East/West War in the Graveyard of Empires, using the warlords against Russian troops in Our National Interest.
Islamic fundamentalism is a cultural antibody-reaction to extra-societal meddling and aggression, from Operation Ajax on….fundamentalistism evolved in the culture as a reaction to western meddling and Russian imperialism.
The best thing we can do…actually the ONLY thing we can do… is remove the inflamatory agent…..our troops.

How many more people….muslims and young american soldiers alike……have to die to save face for a failed attempt to terra-form a culture?
It simply can’t be done, except by conquest, like in post WWII Japan and Germany.
I despise wishful thinking.
It just causes death.

i think i disagreee. womens rights may not be the main objective but they are a “metric” for he mission’s success, which is to create breathing room for the weak civil socity that we have impanted in Kabul to take root, grow, and strengthen.

IMO, this is incredibly naive Aziz. Womens’ rights were pressed ex post to put a spin on the invasion of 2001, a cursory look at the record of some of the allies of the US would indicate this. I am also hugely sceptical about how seriously the US and NATO are taking this, 90% of all aid to Afghanistan is not development related for the civilian sector, the UNDP’s lead Gender project is budgeted for a pathetic $10million of which only $6million has been spent. If you match the actual effort against the rhetoric you can see the disparity. It goes down well at home to say that womens’ rights are what is being fought for but this clearly isn’t the case.

contrary to persistent assertions, we arent “imposing democracy/women’s rights from above”. We are creating space for it to grow in the grassroots manner as you rightly state it must, for long-term viability.

Yes, but this space as you put it is being imposed from above and associating gender equality with external interference has fatal consequences. I don’t think it is fair to say that improvements in womens’ rights should come at the cost of hundreds of people being killed. That isn’t a choice that will generate much broad support for the cause.

John – you are absolutely right, the Taliban were merely an extreme manisfestation but Afghan society is quite conservative. This is something P ascribe mainly to it being rural not any form of Islam, this won’t change unless there are other socio-economic changes put in place imo.

But if you think poetic speach about dragons teeth is ’scary’ to Americans you dont understand American history. We are good at war and killling Americans only will only bring down hell onto whatever cave launches the attack. Oh yes what is the kill ratio ?

Rather incoherent, aren’t you?
Praps you are a concern troll instead of a sock-puppet.
w/e

Yes I am…..and I dont hate them…..I pity them and despise their pig-ignorant stupidity.
Because I understand…..

In my estimation, more misery has been created by reformers than by any other force in human history. Show me someone who says, “Something must be done!” and I will show you a head full of vicious intentions that have no other outlet.

Until you can keep your vicious intentions in your own borders, the Reavers will come.
You chose this War.
May your knife chip and shatter.